Better Man
by HikaKiti
Summary: "You were not sorted into Slytherin for your bravery...If you wanted to be brave, you should have been sorted into the idiotic Gryffindor house." Draco one-shot, during the final battle.


_**Author's note: **I'll be honest with you, not sure where this came from. Just sorta popped into my head one day. Hope they are all in character, I think I got them mostly right. Enjoy!_

They ran. Over the crumbling rubble that dotted the bridge, over dead bodies of both Death Eater and Order Member alike. Ran past the giant's slumped forms. They ran, until the screams faded behind them, and only then did one, the one in the back, slow down and glance back. "Mother..." the tall blonde murmured.

His mother, still running, turned back. "Come, Draco! Run! Come on!" she beckoned to him, still walking backwards.

A piercing scream rang through, clearer than the others that were now slowly fading. Draco flinched and looked back again. "Mum... we're going to run?"

"Of course we are! Fool! Now is not the time for bravery! Stop being so dense and come!" His father yelled, two or three feet ahead of his mother.

Draco flinched at every word, but he had recognized that voice that made the scream. "Mum... Dad... I..." he wondered where this sudden urge to go back came from.

Draco Malfoy was most certainly not a brave person. He was in Slytherin, a house people claimed to be "evil" and "full of cowardly brats". He was manipulative. Clever. Sly. But he was a coward. He would never return to save his so-called friends, and certainly not the people he'd been working _against _for the last seven years. But here he was, standing sideways without a wand, about ready to go back into the battle still raging inside.

"What... what are you doing? Draco... Draco?" His mother stepped towards him. "No! Baby, come on. Lets just go. There's nothing for you there. Nothing! Nobody likes you there, but we love you. Come on, lets go!"

Draco looked at her. Her face was streaked with dried tears, her dark eyes were wide with panic, and her usually straight and perfect hair was in a disarray. "Mum... I can't." he wondered again, who was saying these words? Because it certainly wasn't him. He would never... "I... I want to go back."

"NO!" Lucius snarled, running forward. "You are a fool, son! Come, now!" he grabbed his son's torn jacket sleeve and began to jerk him away from the castle.

"No, Father!" Draco pulled away, leaving a few scraps of his black jacket in his father's long fingers. "You two run. I... I have to go back."

Lucius stared at him in cold, hard shock and a mingled anger. "Son..." he hissed. "You were not sorted into Slytherin for bravery. If you wanted to be brave, you should have gotten sorted into the idiot house Gryffindor." Draco said nothing, but for the first time since he was very little he met his father's eyes. A tremble shook through him and the icy look in Lucius's gray eyes made electricity shoot through him. Lucius snorted. "Fool." he repeated in a sneer.

He turned and walked away. Draco turned back to the castle. Half his brain and most of his tiny black heart was urging him towards the castle, to help, and the other half, mostly logic and his true Slytherin side, urged him away. He stood there. His mother grabbed his arm, pulling him away.

"Mum..."

The woman released his arm and backed off, her eyes beginning to tear up but her face and stance proud and straight. She pulled her wand out from her robes and held it out. "Do what you need to do." she murmured.

Draco ran a hand through his platinum blonde hair and closed his eyes. Grimacing, he grabbed the wand, turned and began to pick his way as fast as he could back to the castle. "Tell father I'm sorry!" he called over his shoulder.

He entered through a hole in the wall and skidded to a stop, shoes slipping on dust and loose stones. A death eater shot him a glance but ignored him. He wrinkled his nose in a characteristic sneer and kept going.

Most of the fighting was breaking up, was over, but here and there the occasional spell was cast. Draco ignored the screams of pain from a black-haired Hufflepuff girl on his left. He had found his target.

She was laying on the ground, writhing from the crucio curse being aimed at her. Blood stained her hands from her clawing at the rubble and her hair, always bushy and brown, was in an even greater disarray. She was filthy, clothes torn and coated in muck and blood, and he went to her rescue.

He went to the aid of the girl _he'd _been torturing for seven long years. He went to her, turned on his own 'team-mate' and stood over her while she recovered, blasting off the curse aimed at them both from a tall lanky Death Eater. He ignored her as she rose to her feet shaking and sobbing, spitting out blood from biting her lips of tongue. Only when she grabbed him and spun him around did he look at her.

"What are you doing?" she demanded.

He looked at her, the usual sneer coming to his dirt-smeared pale face. "What does it look like?"

"You're helping me."

"Guess there is a brain in that bushy head of yours. I'm impressed." He stared down at her. She stared up at him, chocolate brown eyes teary but still startled and wary.

"_Why?_" she queried.

"It's not for you, Granger, so don't get any ideas." he said quickly, snorting. "I just don't like being indebted to Potty." he growled the name. He, truth be told, had told her the truth. Perhaps it was because he'd always had so much money he'd never been in debt to anyone before, and it was bothering him.

Hermione looked even more surprised, but before she could say anything, "EXPELLIARMUS!"

Draco's mother's wand hit the floor a few feet away and he staggered back from the force of the spell.

"Get away from her, you bloody sniffling daddy's idiot bas-" Ron snarled, stalking forward. His bright red hair was gray with sand or dust and he looked just as bedraggled if not more than Hermione but his eyes were lit like twin fires, burning with complete and utter hatred. Hermione ended his yelling with a hard kiss on his mouth and he wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling his face away but holding her to his side with a steel clamp of an arm.

"I wasn't hurting her, Weasel." Draco sneered. "As if I'd want anything with a Mud... nevermind." he stopped himself. "Where's your almighty famous friend?" he hissed scathingly.

"As if I'd tell-"

"Ron, he saved me." Hermione murmured.

"..." Ron stared at her, then glanced up at Draco.

Draco held his gaze but said nothing.

"... What?"

"Draco saved me. A Death Eater was casting crucio on me. He stopped it." Hermione said.

"_Why?" _Ron looked comical, his eyes so wide and eyebrows hidden under his dirty hair.

"Oh, terribly sorry. And here I thought I was doing the Weasel King a favor by saving the girl he liked. Blimey, next time I'll just let her die, how's that?" Draco sneered.

"Draco, stop it." Hermione sighed.

"Oh, so now you think we're on a first name basis, Granger?"

Hermione looked as though she was contemplating punching him again and Draco took a step back, not wanting a repeat of third year.

"You didn't call me mudblood. Its a start." she said instead.

Draco's shoulders drooped, and he found it harder to keep the sneer on his face. "... I'm not interested in being your friend. Just tell me where Potter is."

"He went to find Voldemort, of course." Ron said grudgingly, one arm still wrapped around Hermione's waist while he kept his wand gripped firmly in the other hand.

Draco said nothing else. Instead he ran off, disgusted and confused at what he was doing. He slipped in a pool of blood, and saw that a death eater was bleeding onto the stones, whimpering. He gagged and staggered away, pale skin even paler by the time he caught sight of the untidy black hair and green eyes he was seeking.

It was too late to do anything. Harry and Voldemort were locked together. Draco could only watch as Potter began to explain. He told everyone about Snape's love for his mother. About how the wand had never been Snape's... but it had belonged to Draco Malfoy.

Draco had never been more surprised, and could only gape as the elder wand flew from Voldemort's crumbling hand, how his Dark Lord deteriorated and blew away like dust. How Harry caught the wand the same way he caught Snitches in Quidditch.

Draco could only stand there, looking a bit like a fish with his dropped jaw and huge eyes, as The Boy Who Lived held out the wand to Draco. Not meeting those green eyes with his own gray, he took it and shoved it with his mother's into his pocket.

To make matter's worse, Draco was suddenly shoved to the side as everyone he knew and about fifty he didn't swarmed around Harry, lifted him off the ground, hugged him, shook his hand, screamed his name.

Would he never be better than that scar-headed idiot?

Would he never repay everything the stupid hero had done?

Why hadn't he been stronger when his father insisted he get the Dark Mark?

The last question sprang from the very depths of his being, and he hated it. He hated that the hero had done nothing for himself, and everything for everyone else. He hated that Harry Potter was a bigger and better man than he was.

He swore to change it... soon.

**_A/N: _**_Review please! Flames will be used to scorch Umbridge to a little pile of ash(:_


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